elmyraemilie (elmyraemilie) wrote in snape_potter, @ 2014-07-14 20:23:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | summer challenge14 |
Summer Challenge 14: The Summer Potion (General)
Title: The Summer Potion
Author: elmyraemilie
Other pairings/threesome: None
Rating: General
Word count: 487
Theme chosen: Summer quote: Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. --Sam Keen
Warning(s): None
Summary: It's hot. Sweet Merlin, is it hot.
A/N: Unbetaed.
In the chill and humid cavern of the potions lab, Headmaster Snape propelled a stirring rod around and around a cauldron clad in white enamel. He paused to adjust the temperature charm and then continued his stirring, now widdershins, now deosil. He let the mixture spin as he turned to wield a pestle over a fine sieve, pressing liquid from plant matter into the waiting beaker below.
Grasping the beaker filled with cloudy waters, he tipped it all at once into the cauldron, following it immediately with the contents of a paper laden with a crystalline substance, which had been weighed down to the grain on his most accurate scale. As the vapors rose from the heated vessel, he tipped his generous nose toward them and waved them in with one careful hand. He frowned; waved again; searched among the bottled ingredients before him and took a dropper full of one to enrich the potion. This time, the scent was satisfactory.
The stirring commenced again: deosil, widdershins. The mixture simmered and he tested it by appearance and scent until it was satisfactory. A slash of his wand killed the fire beneath the cauldron, and a further gesture, byzantine, sealed the potion to its final form. A fine mist of sublimated ice rose suddenly, improbably, from the cauldron. He decanted it into a presentation vessel and bore it from the room.
The Headmaster carried his burden carefully from the cool damp of the deepest dungeon up the stairs, through Slytherin's domain, beneath the great clock in the entrance hall, past the paintings of giraffes and Sir Isaac Newton, up sentient steps and through slumbering corridors to a staircase that moved upward at his whispered password.
In his office, the tinkling of the august and arcane instruments of magic was a wind-chime in his ears. Then through one last passage to a room like a slice of cake, straight-sided to a point and curved around the doorway to a terrace, itself curved along the outside of the tower. To this broad and sun-drenched apron he bore his potion, pausing at the doorway to shed his working robes.
"Here we are, Harry." Severus put the pitcher down on the little table between the lounge chairs, beneath the shade of a large conjured palm tree. "I put a bit of spearmint in it this time."
Harry sat up, dabbing at his face with a towel. "Good idea. Mint is supposed to be cooling." He took an icy glass and waited while Severus filled his own. "Here's to the end of the heat wave," he toasted. The tiniest breeze stirred the damp curls at Harry's temples; he turned his face toward it, smiled and closed his eyes. As Severus raised his glass, he murmured, "I cannot in good conscience toast to that. As an excuse to lounge out here with you, doing nothing more complex than making lemonade, I find this heat wave most agreeable."